A Simple Complex
by dr. sluice
Summary: No Uchiha man escapes the family curse. ItaSaku. Non-massacre AU. /On hold indefinitely./
1. Chapter 1

(Note: I thought I'd tamper with the Nabokovian style -- I've recently read some of his stuff and will give it a try.)

* * *

_A Simple Complex_

* * *

There is a belief in the Uchiha clan, said to have stemmed back from the very tongue of Madara Uchiha himself when his brother married a fourteen-year-old prostitute, and asked, "Where can I get one of those?" And sure, enough, my own dear, sweet grandmommy was a carefree genin running carelessly along the hot springs of the small and hospitable Yugakure, whereupon my grandfather (hot and devilish soul he was!) yanked her by the foot and lanced her through with his demon's eyes. Of that became Fugaku Uchiha, who repeated the tradition with his own bride selection.

Which leaves me in a hot predicament, a pacing father with a red face and a mother whose hands have been wrung dry. He says lightly, each time I leave the house, to pick up a nice girlfriend or treat a lady to dinner. But each time I arrive home empty-handed his eyes tear up and he mourns his failure as a parent. My mother watches helplessly on the sidelines as Father and I duke it out in a apathetic-pathetic duel of no wits at all.

"Meet anyone today?" he asks slyly as he slurps up his noodles. He only slurps his noodles so loudly when he's trying to control himself. I don't think it's working.

"No," I say.

"You'd think after all this time... " he gushes on and gulps, gulps, gulps from his sake cup until the tips of his ears are red. He comes back to himself with a smacking Ah! and a hearty burp. "You'd find a girl."

At this point, he's not even worried about my upholding the sacred tradition, only that I meet someone with a uterus and a vagina (preferably not too large, or it might stain the family tablecloth of picnic romances). Hips are optional, as well as breasts.

He's getting old and gray now, I notice this each morning as he has to fight with his flak jacket to fit it on in the mornings; his stomach is swelled enough one might think I may have found someone to impregnate. His jowls have sunken even lower since when he was a robust Konoha Policeman. In his place, I must uphold the law. And sometime in the near future I must uphold his place as head of the Uchiha clan (none of whom especially trust me, or do I trust in return).

"I'm too old for this shit," he whines, restocking the kunai pouches on his hips and breast pockets. "Graveyard shift, from now on, should be kept for the young'uns."

"You're absolutely right," I tell him. If he doesn't work the graveyard shift, I don't have to work with him at all. Period.

"I know I am!"

What has happened to that once proud father who dashed like lightning from place to place and blew nimbus clouds of fire from his grimacing lips? He is hobbling out the front of our happy home, with me in tow, rubbing his pot belly with a clammy hand.

"What about that woman?" he asks pleadingly into the silence.

"What woman?" I lie. I remember her very well.

"You know. That girl with the... " He makes a crude gesticulation.

Yesterday I'd been walking through town in the late afternoon, kicking pebbles across the path, where I heard a mewing. Up in a tree was a cat bawling, down at the base was a girl doing the same. The back of her was cute; a short pink dress and brown sandals, flossy black hair. I walked up with a gentlemanly smile and asked, "Is something the matter, ma'am?" She pivoted around so quickly I found myself applesauced and lodged between two throw-pillow-sized breasts. She squealed, "Eek! A pervert!" and the cat hissed and returned to his mistress's life only to spare her from a great evil. After my eyeball had been almost scratched out, only then had the girl seen the Uchiha fan on my shoulder and tugged away her monstrous vermin. "I'm so sorry!" she began to cry and cry. I walked away her number and an appointment on the 25th.

"Oh, her. Not till later this month."

"That's good, son! Getting into the playing field, at least! Atta boy!" he throws out into the night air with his sake-stained tongue and turns around to leer at me over his shoulder with impossibly proud eyes. "You'll finally make something of yourself."

"I'm glad to know that, Father," I say as I kind of push him along to the police headquarters where a small squad of fiery-eyed branch underling Uchihas will be tapping their feet and pursing their lips. They don't like their superiors much and are just as nasty-tempered as a branch of Hyuugas.

"Goodnight, boys," Father hollers out the door to the sour men as they stalk off, probably dreaming up ways to slit his throat. They used to like him a big, when he carried a bit of integrity. He turns to me at his desk. "Graveyard shift, graveyard shift, graveyard shift, boy, I hate the graveyard shift," he sings into the bottle of sake he's pulled out from his desk drawer.

He, of course, has a key for it.

"I think I'll go out now."

"Good boy, you do that," he brandishes the bottle and sinks back into his desk chair. It makes me halfway want to snatch his titles away from him and do them myself. But that's not really what I want.

A brief stint in the Anbu did show that I was a very capable warrior, a genius since the day my mother pushed me from her carefully chosen womb, and a worthy candidate for Hokage maybe someday if I ever felt like flexing my political connections and boring a hole with my Sharingan. But a ninja cannot depend on physical skill alone and thus I had turned to a bloodless art honed by the oldest of nins: deception. "Ouch! My leg! I'll never be able to walk again!" I cried one day in my early teens. With a false lurch, I'm able to live a fairly comfortable, brideless lifestyle in the same house of my parents.

Of course, I probably should try to find a place of my own. Dropping my father off in his room after a heavy drinking night then walking down the hall and to the left is a bit of a blow to a man's dignity, I think.

* * *

Since Father wants to retire soon, and join the ranks of elderly Uchiha men smoking pipes and rocking on the pavilion in the middle of the compound, he understandably can be concerned about having a proper heir. To find a proper heir means the heir must have the qualifications all written in on a little scroll that the ancestors made after producing their own heirs. One, you must have a wife. Two, this wife must be fertile and produce lots of good smart Uchiha kids with Sharingans. Three, you must have good taste in a wife. Young but not too young. She must at least be able to be impregnated (so dictated Madara Uchiha). And four, the clan must have a sturdy deposit of trust in you.

Looking upon the qualifications, my father might begin to weep. But he has a plan to mold me into the next Uchiha heir. Not only has he coercing me to chat up women, he's been dragging me by the arm to speak awkwardly with flippant branch members who sit on their porches and go ho-hum when they see us walk by. Since Shisui's tragic death in a freak training accident, I haven't made much contact with anyone outside my nuclear family.

In good taste, though, I smile a little at two girls running along a stretch of dirt street as I return home. They both inspect me cautiously and run away with their flailing limbs back to protective fathers. Such is the Uchiha curse.

Today is Sunday, which means a Sunday dinner with my family. Everyday there's a meal cooked up by Mother, but only on Sundays does she real put forth any effort for it. Only on Sundays does little Sasuke run back home from his bravery and steel-plated missions in far stretches of land away from Konoha. While he, a most humble but eager storyteller, spiels off with rice flying from his motored mouth, Father claps in time and hiccups with laughter while Mother and I sit serenely like two whores on the side. (I suppose I do keep my hair long, but it's pretty.)

Sasuke and Father usually end up under the table with bowls of udon resting on the heads and broken sake bottles smashed up behind their well-fed ears. Usually I clean them up while mother clears the table. (Sasuke's such a robust drinker for a boy of onlys sixteen.) Today Sasuke's bringing his girlfriend and Father's heart is leaking in his direction now. He's actually thinking of making Sasuke the head of the clan. "Genius you might be, but social skills you don't have," he last Sunday he belly-laughed after cracking a sake bottle over Sasuke's head. He would never say something like that to me sober, but he's never entirely sober so I'm not entirely sure what he would say if he were sober.

"I'm home," I holler in. Nobody will probably hear me.

"Good, you're home," Mother calls from the kitchen. "I want you to meet someone."

Sitting at the table when I go in is Sasuke with that brooding (and entirely sober) look of his. To his left, though, my heart freezes for an instant and I feel as though I've been thrust into a parallel universe by a mischievous hand. Her eyes (the green, the green they are!) are watching me closely, and her smile is tentative and hiding behind a shock of pink. Uncomfortable with strangers, I can assume. All over she's coarse and tense. The body of sticks connected with sockets and joints. The tenderness in the face. The gooseberry fuzz on her arms. She's perfect.

Ah, you see, I too am afflicted with the Uchiha curse.

Sasuke must be a man after my own heart as well, because his dark and stormy eyes travel over to me and we share a moment of recognition and approval. His face shows no traces of possession or really anything towards the girl, his mug is the only thing important to him right now. I sit across from her and feel my heart fit to burst.

"You must be Itachi Uchiha," she says politely, eyeing me cautiously still and fiddling with the little finger of her glove.

"I am, and who are you?" My voice has never sounded so smooth to my own ears.

"Sakura. Sakura Haruno." Her voice is a little stronger now, with a thin layer of confidence on it. Easily breakable like ice if given the chance, but she's too perfect to screw around with that.

"Good, very good," I murmur and exchange with Sasuke another dark-sighted glance, this time he is the victim and I the villain. It makes me want to chuckle.

You see, as the great Uchiha un-myth goes, Madara, rather than actually asking "Where can I get one of those?", snatched the bride away from his brother and married her himself. Such is the truth of how events usually play out.

History may repeat itself in this man and his own brother. I can only hope it does.

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

Being on the police force does have its perks. For example, right now I'm roosting on a tree outside a house under the pretense that the occupant of this happy home has been smuggling in illegal substances. This is a rare finding, then, because there aren't many substances outlawed here in Konoha. Just ask the whole Uchiha clan. They've tried it all. My claim isn't too far-fetched that Father would raise his brow and tell me no; the girl is a medic ninja. And what is a hot second career path for a medic-nin? Drug dealing, of course.

What I'm doing is of questionable legality myself. Taking advantage of my position and feeding the family curse could land me in prison, right next to a hulking and slobbering beast. That's why I hope I don't resemble a woman too much.

She flicks the lights on and I zoom in with these fantastic binoculars I purchased from the back of one of Sasuke's comic books. The ad advertised free X-ray goggles with my purchase, but added shipping. As soon as my package arrived I gave Sasuke the X-ray goggles and took my binoculars. He still makes use of them when he goes to the hot springs. He makes a brother proud, I do say.

My target is stripping, stripping off her clothes and peeling off those ridiculous boots she wears everyday to work. One might think while working in a hospital she would dress more modestly, or at least somewhat cute. A nurse's outfit or something. But that does not bother me a bit. I love this rough-hewn, tsundere look she puts up--it's totally moe. Tenderly, she slips into strawberry speckled pajamas and begins to paint those waggling little toes of hers. Each one's a fluorescent green. (Her pretty tongue keeps poking out in her concentration.) She's got skill.

Brushes her hair, her teeth, turns off the light (much to my disappointment), and I can see her outline under the blanket as she snuggles up on the pillow.

Now I regret keeping that last tender image in my mind. Most nights I save my little peep shows in slow-motion and play them over in my head again and again as Father and I stumble home, with his head on my shoulder crying. And save them until I get to my bedroom where I can wank off. It's too risky in a tree, right outside the target's lawn.

My evidence would be found.

Tomorrow night, I promise myself as Father begins to leak snot all over my flak jacket. Tomorrow night.

* * *

I am pleased to announce the subject of my tompeepery is warming up to me rather nicely. This afternoon, she's at the Uchiha compound with Sasuke, arm hooked into the crook of his. If I weren't such a weaselly and jealous brother, I would say they make a cute couple. But they do not. They are hideous together. I trail along behind them, pointing out things that might be points of interest to a teenage girl. (The ever suspicious relatives are fearful of my unusually cheerful mood and thus I have seen neither hide nor hair of a distant cousin, aunt or uncle.)

"What's that thing?" She stops and inspects a tree with symbols carved into it. Sasuke shrugs and pulls his arm away from her. Unforunately for my little flower, she has forgotten to be modest and bends over to run her fingers along the base of it. (Please don't be coy, darling, I'm trying to contain myself here.)

"That's called the Uchiha tree of romance. Young couples write their names on it when they're destined to be together," I lie. It's actually just a tree Shisui and I used to carve death threats into the tree to each other. Now it's just mangled.

"Sasuke-kun, did you hear that?" she exclaims excitedly, gripping his arm like he actually likes it. I honesty don't know if he does. "Let's carve our names into it!"

Sasuke grunts. "Okay." And he rips a kunai out from his belt and spins it around his finger, just to show off. Then stabs into it and writes his name.

"Don't forget me, Sasuke-kun," Sakura adds, frowning.

"Right, right," he mutters and puts her name beneath his, kind of sloppily. She snatches the kunai away and draws a lopsided heart around both their names. After he and she leave, I plan to make this tree into pulp fiction.

Now I can't blame my dear brother Sasuke for his narcissistic, phlegmatic behavior. When you come from a house of Uchiha and you have the assets to support that name, there is hardly any shame in being himself. That's just who he is. Unplayful, objective, sour. Get to know the man-boy a bit more and he's the same inside and out. His blood is of iced tea, his heart is of lettuce, his gaze is of doom, and his penis is of perpetual limp mode. The last fact I am not certain of, but I am of the suspicion that he hasn't boned his eager little sweetheart yet.

Cure that for you I could, flower.

Sasuke is hesitant to take her past the pavillion, where nirvana exists for the elderly males of the Uchiha clan. You see, once your bottom hits a rocker, your entire life's accomplishments matter no longer and you become an invisible man to the rest the village. To light up your Sharingan in that advanced age is like up and deciding to become a missing-nin. It's too much effort to exert for an old codger. I hope to join them up there someday. But his reasons are understandable. Antiquated and obsolete as they may be, they all still carry the Uchiha curse. And with no stoic reputation to tie them down, they'll hoot and holler at my flower like there's no tomorrow.

In the first display of concern I've seen all day, Sasuke tucks Sakura behind him and sandwiches her between us. He stretches his arms out behind his head, like he never does, and looks so conspicuous it's almost laughable. I'm both surprised and delighted his face is toward the pavilion while mine is right at the nape of her neck. She tries to duck past Sasuke to see. "Old men?" I hear her murmur.

"Ancestors," I say. "Toady ancestors." As if I'm not toady.

She turns her head to give me a look. "I see." My flower is such a knowledgeable girl. For this I want to give her a pinch to the cheek. (It is a side-effect that is perfectly suited for the curse.)

I squeeze her shoulder, hopefully not enough to creep her out, and steer her toward my own happy home with Sasuke in tow. He doesn't seem to mind this at all. "Listen, fl--Sakura-chan. Come anytime you want. Our home is your home." My bed is your bed; what I painfully long for anyway. It's time for her to go home. I have some business to attend to.

"Aw, that's sweet," she says giving me that bittersweet smile that I'd love to ravish with my tongue. "Thanks."

Sasuke strolls up behind us. "Have a nice day," he says and waves lamely to her as she goes.

She waves back. I do so too, but not as enthusiastically as I'd like.

"Humph," Sasuke says, stuffing his hands into his pockets. I probably won't see him until dinnertime anyway; he hasn't any missions this week for the holidays.

I go to my room right away.

(I'll probably be editing this chapter sometime. It feels weak.)


	3. Chapter 3

Sasuke, last night, said to me something quite disheartening. He cleared his throat and made to me a small announcement from the corner of his lips--as I watched his and my darling's knees bump together under the table: "I'd appreciate if you didn't do that anymore." Such a keen boy! Had I plead the innocent, he would have wrenched it out of me with his somber and knowing hands, then left my corpse twisted on an overgrassy training ground with a high number. "Don't be such a sourpuss," I said over a cup of sake (slowly I am morphing into my father), "I'm just having a little fun." Amusing, later on in the evening, he didn't even stake a possessive claim to the sweetheart. Just sat there dopily until Father cracked a bottle of sake on his head.

Our flower is slowly adapting to the events of the Uchiha house, quite nicely.

Tonight we're gathered round the table--Mother is slurping up her miso and the rest of us are slurping sake, save for Sakura. My flower is only slurping up conversation. (With Sasuke as cold as he is, I can't help to stop from ogling a moment and engage in a little conversation.)

"So you're a medic-nin?" I lean in from the shoulder up. She doesn't seem intimidated. "That must be a rough job. Taking care of the sick and the dying and all. I would be too depressed all the time."

She laughs--that tinny little laugh that makes my heart jingle with glee; Sasuke is wrong. "You learn to deal with it. Plus it's a great to look at the person you've healed after you pour your chakra into them. It's exhausting, but worth it. That makes it not so bad."

I visualize, instinctively, a great white room where I'm in a hospital bed with fluttering lids and a gaping mouth as I open up to a world of bacteria-free indolence. My flower is right beside my bed, glowing up her palms and pressing them into the middle of my chest where lies a deep gash under crunchy cotton sheets, earned from my noble duties on the military police. She, a white-capped nurse, and I, a stoic veteran, share a singing moment of romance crowned with roses. I dream, I sigh.

"Are you okay?" she asks, waving her hand in front of my face. She has plucked the feathers from the dove, all right.

"Just--just the sake," I tell her feebly.

"Oh, okay. What's it like on the force?" she asks between chewing teeth.

"Fine, I suppose. Chasing criminals, doing stakeouts, busting thugs. It's a tiring job. I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyway with half a brain."

"Then why are you on there?"

Has my flower just given me a compliment? Has she? I may just faint. But, no, I won't. I stay long enough to answer. "It's the place where all the Uchihas go if the village doesn't really need them. Kind of like a landfill or a dump or something."

"Oh."

Yes, oh. Yes, oh, yes. My flower is certainly right. Yes, oh. Once an Uchiha forms his bones and flesh completely it's determined whether or not he's eligible for Leaf village duties. If he has a clockwork brain and a rigorous, thunderous, self-honed training schedule along with a mighty Sharingan, the village wants him. If he has half that, he's drafted into the Konoha Military Police. If he has a quarter or less, he's labeled a defunct Uchiha and serves maybe in the kitchen at a ramen noodle shop after a brief stint on a genin team (for example, Obito Uchiha if he had lived long enough). My portions are generous, maybe more so than any other Uchiha in history. But my brain is not right and doesn't want to function the way it should. (I do carry the same complexes that Father and everyone else believes I do not have.) Genetically in mind, I'm a bit out there for such a bellicose clan.

Sometimes it bothers me, while I brood and retrieve naughty cats from trees, that such a brutal and blood-thirsty group of peoples could carry such a bittersweet and romantic curse. Surely Madara did not think of flower gardens while lancing a fellow ninja with a sword. It is a poet, like me, who can appreciate these sorts of things. Not them.

"So, Sakura-chan," my father says sleepily from his spot on the floor. "Are you and Sasuke engaged or something?"

My flower turns bright red at this; especially at witnessing a drunk father's loose tongue when he's usually been sober and stoic in her presence. "No, no. I don't think so."

Good, I'm glad.

"Actually, yes, we are," Sasuke says, putting his head in my flower's lap. Her arms raise in surprise but they settle back down. His lazy black eyes watch me, not mockingly or anything. But cool and calm. Does he enjoy plucking the feathers from doves, too? What a sadist, my brother.

I run amok with disbelief, in my mind. "Are you? Really?" I ask.

"Really, truly." He says this so comfortably.

"Good God," I say and drink until my vision grows fuzzy and all I can do is crawl across the floor to my bedroom like a cockroach. I hear Father say something about a wedding date. When he does this, I vomit all over the floor.

* * *

I wake up, with a terrible hangover and stagger on over to the bathroom down the hall. On my way, I notice Sasuke's door is wide open. It's usually as homey and fraternal as a room in an inn, but it's got something more wild and exotic livening up the deadness. On the floor, curled up in one of those white blankets Sasuke likes so much, is my flower. Looking so tender and petite. The sake in my mind wants to recycle itself and for me walk in, so I do. I listen closely as it whispers in my ear and tells me to kneel beside and stare. I do so willingly. She doesn't stir a bit. My hand covers her kneecap over the blanket; it's so warm and full of life that I can't believe this is Sasuke's room. It slips, devilishly, up her thigh and just around her navel. There it's warm as well. I should leave before I get too carried away.

"Goodbye," I tell her forehead and exit with a kiss to it.

While I shower, I can find my secret springtime where a spring rain dribbles on the hollyhocks and refreshes the chemicals of the dense underground. So the evidence of my love slides down the drain with all my suds. I towel-dry my hair (so fine it's gotten over the years) and shave. Not a nick, unlike Sasuke who is barely old enough to shave and doesn't usually leave the bathroom without a spot of toilet paper on his chin or cheek.

I see he's at the table, eating breakfast by himself when I go into the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee. Stupid boy, just sitting there eating his favorite oatmeal. I'd like the grind up his dry bones and eat them. What an ogre I am.

"Morning," he says politely to me as I lean up against he counter. If my flower were out here, I'd bother to put on a shirt. I wouldn't make her wear one, of course.

"Morning." If I act too coldy, Sasuke will pick up on it and twist it to his advantage.

We say nothing for the span of time I spend waiting for my coffee to finish. Secretly I like mine black. But the rest of the family likes those mountain-grown kinds advertised at the grocery store with big faux-authentic backgrounds of field workers harvesting it. You'd the opposite, wouldn't you?

"I just wanted to tell you, so if Sakura wakes up and asks--I'm guessing you know she's here--that I have a mission today. So I'm leaving pretty soon."

"Ah," I say and drink my coffee and read the paper while he suits up in the backroom. "I will."

The headline of the paper today says something about the engagement of the Hokage's son. It makes the gears in my head turn. Very much so. You see, Sasuke, since his innocent academy days, has harbored a special distaste for the Hokage's son. Some blonde guy with a larger-than-life mouth. But's he powerful--you can't deny him that. A year or so ago, he sent Sasuke to the hospital on a stretcher. That's a feat in itself. So I'm wondering if his and my flower's hastily announced engagement was something just for a rivalry. Poor, poor flower. I'll have to mend my brother's ways.

"Have a great day," I call from the kitchen when he leaves.

"Humph," I hear him say in return.

Years ago, Sasuke used to jump all over me like an excited pup. It was somewhat nice, having a lone admirer. A zealot of things, mainly. But since he's hit puberty and grown a pair of scathing Uchiha eyes infused with the Sharingan, Big Brother Itachi has lost his appeal. Now he's just a sad, lonely, funny grown man still living with his parents (Sasuke is a grown man, too, by village standards, and he still sucks off Mommy's teat--hypocrisy, thy name is Sasuke). No genius he is anymore.

Half an hour later, and I'm still sucking every bit of information I can about the Hokage's son's engagement. It says nothing about why or how or who or what. Just when: two months from now in the Hokage's tower where the blonde-topped Hokage himself will deliver the vows upon the happy couple. This infuriates me. Not at the Hokage's son. But at my bastard of a brother. While I brood in turmoil and half-ripped sheets, out slinks my flower with bleary eyes and out of control yawning.

"Good morning," she says immodestly, sitting across from me at the table.

"Good morning," I say back.

"Listen. Do you want breakfast?" She asks this so suddenly. My heart doesn't even have enough time to rejoice I'm in such a frenzy.

"Oh, sure. Yes."

Every once in a while she taps my shoulder and asks me where things are--eggs and bread, stuff like that. She fries us some eggs and plots them down on the table while I'm digesting this whole thing in my head.

"Do you guys have any juice?"

"In the fridge."

What I don't understand is, why Sasuke would have this relationship for maybe a year and a half and then just dump this engagement nonsense onto it. It didn't seem like he had any interest in dating her, much less marrying her. To me, I always have seen it as a commerical sort of thing. She lives in blissful ignorance while he grits his teeth and goes through the pain of it. Surely he and the Hokage's son--Naruto, I think it is--wouldn't go this far to the depths of their rivalry. In my poet's mind, this is wretched. But maybe steely old Sasuke doesn't realize that whatever relationship that Naruto and his betrothed have is possibly real. I have no clue. What a barbaric thing to do.

I finish my eggs and smile a little--even my libido is dwindling--at my flower. Damn that Sasuke. "Thanks."

But instead of receiving a smile back, I see her face. It's crying. Leaking out snot all over the place and tears. Just streaked to high heaven. Oh, no. I'm no good with weeping women. I'll fall. I'm probably even more vulnerable than she is right now.

"Don't cry, don't cry," I begin panicking. She falls into my shoulder--I hear her jaw hit up against it and she bawls. Bawls a river down my bicep.

"Doesn't love me, doesn't love me," she whimpers and howls.

"I'm sure that's not true," I lie.

She struggles to pull away awkwardly (I haven't bothered to fence her in my comforting arms) and her red, wet, swollen face stares into mine before she goes in for the kill. My flower kisses me, kisses me. Daintily on the lips and--good God--I'm lost between the pages of heaven and hell, wanting to take advantage but not turning into a Sasuke.

But I enjoy her wet eyelashes slapping up against my nose too much when I decide to indulge.


	4. Chapter 4

As you might imagine, several funny events have played out after my sweet tragedienne bestowed upon me a tearful and nonsensical kiss. At the moment, she is finishing her eggs and wiping her eyes dry with the sleeve of Sasuke--who lets her borrow his clothes for the convenience but not the sentimentality (another strike to my cold, cruel brother). Sadly, these funny events haven't played out as I'd hoped. You see, my flower isn't much of a dawdler--had I realized this earlier, I may have directed my affections onto a more vulnerable creature.

She had pulled away with that ghastly gleam of realization in her puffy eyes, and did I lament that she came to her senses. "No, no, no," I quote, "I can't take this out on you. That would be wrong. I'm so sorry."

Now she swings her legs and looks something between lost and at sea. I'd offer her a map, but it's pity that I don't know the routes and geography of a young girl's mind. If I did suggest something, it would be from a stockpile of quotes that one garners from small talk over the years. "There, there" is at the top of my list.

"Don't worry about it." That wins. I am an excellent liar.

My flower is no fool. "I have to tell Sasuke-kun about it." Her eyes look very frantic like a cat's before you step on its tail.

All these ridiculous conclusions and this is the most foolish yet. My tongue pokes the inside of my cheek and luxuriates around for a moment before I come across some neglected egg nested in a space. I wiggle it around while my flower expands on what she'll do.

"I'm going to go right up to him next time I see him and tell him: 'Sasuke, I kissed your brother.' How does that sound?"

I nod solemnly.

Her loyalty to him is astounding. I don't even know if a dog could be as such. Then again, every dog I've ever had has run away within twenty-four hours of being in my presence, so I've never had great faith in the fidelity of a canine.

She claws her face down with her reedy fingers (those I love and want on hot, aching portions of my body--don't keep them on your face, flower!) and I can see the fleshy underbelly of her eyes. How grotesque. My flower seems to have tears dribbling out again.

"How do you think he'll react?" she asks miserably, still those red crescents under her eyes.

"If I were you, I just wouldn't tell him." It is a sane piece of advice that's been around since man did not walk the earth.

Instead of hopping up and shouting eureka, she bawls some, sniffs some, and looks miserable (some). I can see the gloom and doom of her conscious and the feckless imagination of her brain cranking out the outcomes of not telling him. Plain and simple. Black and white. Life or death.

"I can't do that. He'll find some weird way to get it out of me." She sighs, she weeps.

Ah, so she too is paranoid of the Sharingan. With a experiened-honed, talented Uchiha it may be the truth. (Me, perhaps? Never doubt a crafty narrator.) But from someone with Sasuke's age and level, it would never come to be.

"I doubt it. He probably won't care you what you do," I say. I feel sort of guilty after saying it, the way she looks at me like I've just told her she's ugly, but I feel it needs to be said. And dawdler she may not be, but an idealist she is to the very pit of her pink-crusted soul.

"You really think that?" Her face is all scrunched up for another round of crying that I have a feeling I'm soon going to transplant with a new hope (not quite yet).

"Not an opinion, sweetheart." I vacuum the remaining egg off my fork even though it's been crusting up for the last fifteen mintutes.

"Oh God. So it's true. It true." Her thinnish arms are pretzeling on the table, her tender face falling down upon them and spangling them with salt-drop tears.

"I'm afraid so, fl--Sakura-chan."

She's now reading my fragmented newspaper.

You see, I am a peace-loving bastard to the very core of my being. I assure you that. But there are times in all of us, I'd like to think, that we see something sitting there all giftwrapped and addressed to another person and we find in ourselves a wanton desire to reach out and take it. And usually after our naughty hands are slapped away, we find ourselves bitter--sour grapes, if you will--and find ourselves, sometimes, in an advantageous situation. Those with a stronger will might not reach out to it. I am in this situation, and I hope you can commiserate with me when I say this--opportunity knocks, you listen.

Her mouth is in a thin line, her eyes are fleeing, and her brain is working (I can see the wheels turning). Her thoughts are identical to mine, I just know it. "I might just have to do that."

Now it probably isn't me who has given her hope; I just credit myself in directing her toward it. Revenge is a seven-letter word with three vowels and four consonants. To my flower, it's a dish best served re-heated.

"I'm glad you're thinking clearly. Now about that article. Sasuke's going--"

She studies me like a raptor might study a lizard before swallowing it whole. "How would your parents feel about another boarder?"

Ah, she's fit to genius.

* * *

We're plotting up in the dusty old attic where no one can see us. My flower's already knocked over a pottery artifact (which had the portrayal of a pint-sized bride attending to her stern Uchiha groom). Many things up here, like the ceramics, are of questionable legality. Recent laws might smother out the flame the Uchiha crest fans (at this point I might laugh and say, "Get it?"), but up in this history museum there's not a chance.

Up in this vicinity, we are mapping out maps, plotting up plots, and cooking up delightful dishes of revenge schemes. Hers are a little bit tasteless and violent, my are equivalent to stroking a chicken then chopping its head off at the last moment. Neither is a saint, it shows.

"I know I'm gonna stay here," she says firmly. "I just need to find some ways to piss him off. But what? He never says a damn thing about anything I do."

Everything you do, of course, flower, turns him off from you. But to me it's the opposite. "He doesn't like spiders. Try filling his bedroom up with spiders."

"I don't like spiders, either, though." She shudders and scratches her ear. "And if I stay here, I'm staying in his room, right?"

You could stay in mine. "True."

She checks things off a list. "Midnight castrations and haircuts, no. Removal of body parts, no. Psychological damage, yes."

My flower looks so pretty while she comes up with these vicious schemes. It's near the end of the holidays, though, so she'll be going back to the hospital soon which leaves me in my own company. Well, except for the grumpy underling branch Uchihas back at headquarters. I'll be lucky to be a live man when I return to work.

"But what? God, you're his big brother. You should know how to toss him around till his brains are mushed. You could fuck him up real good."

He is family, he is my brother. I simply cannot do this, even for the apple of my eye. "Sorry, nothing beyond spiders. Family before scheming mistresses," I explain sadly. I am weeping inside.

She staggers up onto her knees and from there I can see in her shirt. Nothing to say about it. I find this view rather distasteful, is all. Remember, I am afflicted with the curse. She whimpers and creaks on. I am fool to keep listening.

"You know, he did say one time that he didn't like kids. I could make him get me pregnant and we'd have to raise a kid together."

"That's a lot of responsibilty for two kids like you guys," I say sagely. I know this is sagely because she's suggested such a stupid thing.

It's wild and crass. Of course, the idea's foolproof, but it is a tough one. But what she said he doesn't like does make my eyebrow pop up; Sasuke's an Uchiha, it's in his blood he'd some day love a child. What a fool he is. He can't fight destiny. It's decided for him, to quote that horrid Hyuuga bastard who's been busted for smuggling forbidden jutsus in from other villages. It was I who did it actually, he said my fate was to die a bloody death at the hands of him. What a palmreader he was.

"It might work." She shrugs.

I snort. "Sasuke could still be a virgin for all I know."

"Really? You think?" My flower asks my opinion on far too many things. It's an unattractive quality when I all I want to do is reenact one of the scenes depicted on my ancestors' pottery.

"If you are, he probably is."

"Good, good. Then he is."

And we find ourselves trapped in a conclusive effort to mold this purity into something wretched and evil. What devils we are.

(P.S.--Thanks, guys, for all the reviews. They make my day.)


	5. Chapter 5

"I'm really sorry, but no."

My father is grim, apologetic and worst of all, sober, when he tells Sasuke this at dinnertime. Sasuke, my little Sasuke-chan, hasn't swallowed a drop of sake all evening either. It's because we're having a Family Discussion. Of the variety where sake bottles aren't cracked over heads and all family members have cleaned their ears thoroughly of all wax. But apparently Mother and I matter not. I am crying on the inside.

"Why not?" asks Sasuke. This isn't really a question; more of a challenge to Father.

When I was a small boy, when I was not old enough to sprout opinions on things in the snap of a finger, Father often took me up to the history museum located in our attic. He would smoke his pipe and look around for a while, as if reminiscing. Then he would tell me all about what it meant to be a Uchiha and the rules pertaining to heads of the family (which he often used to slip into conversation with me, and still does). Like how the heads of the family married girls who were like that. And how heads of the family married someone of a pedigree. Just a small fact of Uchiha heritage.

He must've never discussed this with Sasuke.

And for once, it's endearing to see my little brother being a hothead over someone he doesn't even to really seem to care about.

"I've never heard of a Haruno clan at any time in the history of Konoha."

"That doesn't mean anything," Sasuke says, flexing his fingers on his knees. Deadly poisonous snake poised to attack. "For all you know she could be the heiress to some little principality by the sea."

Father snorts. "If she were, she'd probably know it by now."

Sasuke lets loose a string of compliments for my flower: "She's clean, she's nice, and she loves me. Why the hell not?"

Our father can sometimes be the most perceptive man on the planet. "It might be different if you actually _loved_ her. But even when I'm drunk... God, Sasuke, could you be any more of a dead fish?"

"That's right," I add. Oh, what an ogre I am.

Sasuke lifts his chin up and looks me dead in the eye. "You shut up. It's not like you're ever going to do anything for the clan except perv out whenever Sakura comes over."

Underestimating my little brother it seems I've been doing too much as of late. My eyes widen dramatically, but I'm not totally unsurprised. As an Uchiha, you must be perceptive. "That's not true. She's your betrothed. I would never do a thing like that."

Sasuke snorts. "Yeah, like a girl like her would smuggle in prescription medicines. Good one, Itachi. Wait until she hears about that."

Father looks at me, passively. The wings of his nostrils are flared out, so much that they might take flight soon. "I can't blame him."

This apparently was directed to Sasuke, because he responds. "So it's okay for Itachi to stalk my fiancee?"

Our father weighs this around for a moment then shrugs, surprisingly. "She's not your fiancee, Sasuke. She can't be. I'm sorry. End of discussion." He dabs his mouth with a napkin primly before finally reaching for his cup of sake.

"You said, 'Oh, that's nice' before and nice you're saying no? What the hell, Father? Since when does this rare alter ego get to make all the important decisions for you?" Sasuke seethes. Oh, does he seethe. There is a small fire burning for him in my heart.

"Because," he says flatly and shakes open the evening paper, "things are so much different when I'm sober. It's strange really. Mikoto, could you pass the salt?"

Mother does so. But her lips are opened, just a little, like she wants say something. And finally she does.

"Sasuke, there's a nice Hyuuga girl who's about your age. Why don't you talk to her?" Bold, Mother, very bold. Father will shoot you down in just a moment, after he takes his first sip of sake for the night. He will still be in himself enough to argue that, anyway.

"No." He actually sets his newspaper down and gives Mother the eye. "Have you seen that Hyuuga girl? No way, Mikoto. No way."

Sasuke looks a little flushed as he too reaches for his sake cup.

I smile as I get mine. "She does have a little sister."

Father and I are such parallel monsters, yet so different in thought. How strange it is. But on some matters, we are devils alike, soaring on the same wing of Satan's back. "I know."

He says this with a smile hovering over his sake cup.

* * *

Today is the twenty-fifth of the month. And I did promise that girl I would show up at the barbecue. I'm not one for barbecue much, but I will do it to satisfy her. She's such a nice person.

We're sitting in a booth, in a corner where it's hard to view either of our faces. She is eating, so tenderly and so mildly. Yet I've only ordered a cup of coffee. Several times she's timidly suggested I get something to eat. But I don't want to. I'm bubbling with excitement.

"Itachi-san, I hope this isn't too much of a problem. I just thought maybe since you're on the force that you can help me with it. Naruto-kun's been so nice--he _is_ the Hokage's son. But you're the only with with this kind of authority."

Sitting before me is the heiress of the Hyuuga clan herself, Hinata-chan. What a sweet girl, I should say again. She does fill in one of the big qualifications of pedigree for Sasuke, but she is too big, physically speaking to bear Uchiha babies and maybe pass along an interesting blood limit to any offspring she and Sasuke (we) might have. She claims that it's strictly business that she wanted to see me, but what it really is happens to be foul play.

"I can't just do it for anything, you know." I blow the steam from my coffee. "There has to be solid evidence. And like you said, he _is_ the Hokage's son. That's enough to be let off scot-free for just about anything. It would have to be something big."

Her ankle keeps wagging; I feel it under the table. "Like murder?"

I shrug. "Rape would probably be enough."

She looks sorrowful. Those white Hyuuga eyes hold so much sorrow in them it's painful for me to look at her directly while I speak to her. "This is so hard. I don't want to taint Naruto-kun's reputation... but..."

"But you want out of this, right? That's the basic idea here. Who put you up to this? Your father?"

She nods.

It's strange to me how undesirable Hinata Hyuuga can be to me, when I'm sure men from several nations have come to her on bended knee, for her. She's got a wonderful personality, a body (I am no judge of it, especially for the curse; I always blame it), and a lovely face (that I can judge because it's so cherubic). If not for her physical deformities and family lineage, I would throw her over my should myself. But, alas, that's where my taste deviates from the standard male Uchiha. Pedigree is so bland.

"What I can do for you," I say this carefully, "is make a set-up. Of course, I'll need some evidence, if you know what I mean," (at this she turns red as my flower's hospital attire and ducks her head), "and it might be slightly embarrassing for your sister."

My leg itches. So I scratch it.

She looks like she is ready to hyperventilate. "I know, Itachi-san. But she'd do it for me." So, ah, she follows my wicked train of thought well.

Her little sister is far too young and scary for my tastes. But Naruto-kun will be surprised to find how like-minded our desires our, even if he does not hold them dear to his heart. What a shame.

"That's good."

Her face brightens up a little bit. "Now it just leaves Sasuke-kun."

Well, after this conversation, I'm certain everyone will be ending up with what they want. Especially after what I've learned today.

(How was it?)


	6. Chapter 6

On the other side of the universe, my head is loafing on the loxodrome of two sweet red protuberances and the pink, fleshy organ inside that shivering skull is yelling with such sweet sorrow that it, too, could not be acquainted with this experience. And if some foreign enemy nin (or perhaps Neji Hyuuga, with his rough and tumble hands might strangle me) were to hold a kunai to my throat and slash it now I would die in such glorious and splendid happiness that I wouldn't notice anything at all. I toss, I turn.

It's too wonderful.

"Like my bed that much, Itachi-san?" my flower asks from the door. Her arms are crossed, and her face is... I'm not sure.

Springing up onto my hands, I shrug. "I'm tired. It's been a long week, you know."

To my relief she doesn't hand out any more strange looks, but instead sits cross-legged on the floor (I expected her to boot me from the bed). My flower _does _look bedraggled, no doubt from a rescue mission -- she is a brave soul. But it was she who summoned me here on such short notice; this was not a thing I decided for myself. I do assure you, however, I would frequent this dreary little apartment if I did have a free will to squander. Such a thing is beyond my grasp.

I sigh. "What's going on?"

My flower is especially cantankerous today, picking at the coarse salmon carpet. (It is an ugly shade, but I do love a waif in despair -- it tears my heart into halves and stitches it together again.) A twitch in her face appears before I see the tears. "Sasuke-kun... he said we _aren't_ an item anymore. He broke it off. Ka-bloom. Blam." She fists her hand and hits it in her open palm, morosely. Poor flower.

My shoulders slip back just a bit. "Ah, I'm sorry."

Those ridiculous burning eyes come up to me. How accusatory they are! As if I have done her wrong. "Did you know about it?"

"Not the slightest idea, fl--Sakura-chan."

Her long, monkeyish toes are wriggling. She hasn't taken her sandals off yet. What an unhomely thing to do. And her chin tilts up. "Don't lie to me, _Itachi-san_. Sasuke-kun told me the whole thing. He said that you _wanted_ for the engagement to end. And he also said..."

My face is burning. Burning so much like those eyes that want to murder.

"...that he doesn't want to see me anymore," she wails off and covers her face with her hands. My poor flower is sprawled on the floor like a glossy-feathered bird shot down from her perch. Oh, what a tragedy.

But in my heart, there is some relief. That Sasuke hasn't ratted me out. Yet.

Now, at this moment, I would like to address a topic or two concerning my flower. As a genius, it may be one to harp on me rightly for conjuring such beastly things to say to my flower when she is kneeling at the foot of the heavens and bleeding her eyes dry. What a terrible creature I must be. But, it _was_ me who was trying to extend a hand to her while she was drowning in the murky puddle of teenage politics. Has she completely forgotten her grudge against this fictional engagement? Isn't _that_ the bedrock of her woes? I stretch my lips a bit and rub my chin. Another thing, I must confess, I may possibly be preying upon my flower's vulnerability, as I slide off the edge of her bed. Smoothly as possible. I sit on my knees beside her and let our hairs collide. Her wide forehead against mine.

So cool.

"Do you know _why_?" she snivels. She is just like my father, leaking snot all over my shoulder. "If... if you were there you should at least know why. _I_ should know why."

Be quiet, flower. You're ruining my moment. "There is a reason. But it's not your fault. It's not something you can't help."

My flower does that horrid thing again where the underbellies of her eyes are revealed. Our foreheads are no longer touching. A fool I am. "What, am I too ugly? Am I too fat? Do I have halitosis?"

"You're not pedigree." I say this very quickly and coolly. I fear I can't say it any way else.

"Pedigree, pedigree... as in I'm not some princess or something?" She rubs the backs of her hands over her eyes till they're red. Another ghastly habit. Flower, I'll have to housetrain you all over again. "I can't be with him because of _that_?"

That and several other things. I sigh and box up all my audacity for another time. "Look. I'm very sorry, fl--Sakura-chan. But I can't do anything about it. Nobody can except the ancestors"--my eyes move up to the ceiling--"and they're all decomposed in the ground now." Poor ancestors downgraded to worm chow. My heart throbs for them.

"Well, I knew _you_ probably couldn't do anything about it. I'm not a little girl. I'm not that idealistic." I have just been rebuffed.

She blows a warm breeze across my elbow, where she is now. All her stick limbs and socket joints disarrayed at my feet. I would put this broken puppet back together again if she'd let me. It just takes a small amount of massage oil and some romantic words gushed into her ear. I am a philanthropist, no? Now is the time for this snake in the grass to strike with his deadly poison fang.

(I think there's a jutsu like that.)

"Sakura-chan, did you really love Sasuke that much?" I try to relax and angle myself so I can be eye to eye with her.

Her eyes are fixed on a bedpost. "I _did_. But now... I feel a little dead inside, if you know what I mean. It's, like, heartbreak, I guess." She breaks off into a rainy onslaught of hiccups which shower my hand on the floor. Tough, flower. Love is tough, I want to tell her.

Also, I want to tell her I have this theory. Something during Hinata's meeting set me off a bit -- at the very end she melded some words thickly into her sigh of relief. Something about Sasuke. With enough detective work, I'm certain I could find something out. Maybe stalking my little brother in the dead of the night. Seeing if his missions are really extra missions. I KNOW he wouldn't do D or C-ranked missions unless the Hokage himself assigned them. Not something he'd do on his own free will (he does have one more than I do). All the Hyuuga girl had asked me to do was help get rid of Naruto-kun for her engagement.

Of course, the wedding in two months.

She hadn't specified WHY, though. I at least had expected her to tell me what I was doing it for. Nothing beyond that her father had put her up to it. (And Naruto-kun's father, too, I must presume.)

I launch my attack with a little temple-stroking, with the thumb, and then combat her leaking tear ducts. Stupid things they are. I don't kiss them but find myself garnering a tongueful of tears anyway. She apparently doesn't mind that I move in for the last and most succulent attack.

Oh, the kiss.

It's horribly wet and frantic, the way she's made it. I've started in slowly and securely to give her some space to fizzle in, but... it's progressed into unarousingly pornographic sloppiness. Several times I ease away a little until she calms herself but it only becomes feverish as before. Good God, I'm not a pornstar. And as nice as that may sound to some, it's got that sinister bite to it that's utterly... _tacky_. If this is the way my flower wants to go about it, I give up.

But...

"Take it easy," I whisper into her eyebrow. "Don't rush things so much."

There I was dreaming of flower gardens and petite princesses watering them, and now I'm encountering an _actual_ little waif with the rough-hewn quality. I believe, dear me, it's one of those cases where a person idolizes from afar and then finds the truth. Oh, don't let that happen. I'll teach you, flower. Don't be a monkey on the run. I do acknowledge, however, that if things are taken _too_ slowly, she'll have the gall to think when she's not frenzied and clawing at my clothes. That is the only repercussion.

"Why are we on the floor?" she demands and rips herself from me. She dives onto the bed and sprawls out, limply. It's almost endearing. "Come onto the bed." She pats a spot of uninhabited pink sheet.

"Hold on," I say, kicking off my pants. Her eyes are watching me lazily. (Dear God, has she done this before? Or has this whole ordeal likened her morals to mush? I am regretting.)

And so, I would like to tell you that we consummated our lewd and indecent kiss with a soft and slow lovemaking session that sent us flying through rainbows. But I am both miserable and satisfied to report that I, in my underwear, have gone for her mouth a second and hopefully victorious time, to find her wet and puffy eyes closed, her eyelids spasming through a dream and her fluffy pink head on the tiptop of my shoulder. Should I save my aspiration for a rainy day?

We might steam up the windows.

(Was it okay? :D)


End file.
